Preparing For Your Skydive

Your reservation time is your arrival time.

It tends to be about 30° cooler at altitude, so consider dressing in comfortable layers and wearing athletic shoes. Most people wear shorts, jeans or leggings. Please pull long hair back and take off your jewelry ahead of your skydive. Avoid wearing boots.

Yes. For safety reasons, it’s standard for skydiving dropzones to impose strict weight limits. At STG, you must weigh 250 lbs or less in order to skydive. Tandem students who weigh over 200 lbs will be assessed a fee of $1 per lb.

Certain conditions – epilepsy, obesity, heart problems and others – might preclude you from jumping. If you have a medical condition that might interfere with your ability to safely enjoy flying to altitude and skydiving, check with your doctor before booking your jump.

It’s strongly recommended that you do not jump with a head cold.

When you’re congested, your ears and sinuses may not equalize pressure normally as you go up in altitude and during the ride down under canopy. That pressure can build quickly and become very uncomfortable, and in some cases it can lead to pain that sticks around after the jump.

If you’re feeling under the weather, the safest move is to reschedule and come jump when you can breathe clearly and feel 100%.

Yes! We provide every tandem student with protective goggles (which are disinfected between guests).

Weather is not usually an issue due to our unique location on the sunniest side of the Gulf. But, cloud cover, high winds, rain and other weather events do blow through and make for potentially unsafe jumping conditions. If you can wait for skies to clear or can reschedule, awesome. If not – and our weather delay is longer than 3.5 hours – then your deposit is totally refundable.

We have a maximum of two tandem students per flight. Don’t want to wait for someone else to join the load? For a fee we can send up a single-student flight.

Our aircraft can take two tandem passengers at a time. While you can ride to altitude together, you’ll jump out separately with your instructors. Let us know when making your reservation if you’d like to jump with a friend so we can do our best to accommodate your request.

Yes! And our recommendation is to get it – you only skydive for the first time once! We offer still photos and video services, complete with a music soundtrack. All original footage and photos remain the property of Skydive The Gulf to use in promotions or other activity.

Of course, filming in extreme conditions may result in less-than-awesome footage or equipment malfunctions from time to time. Issues such as tandem passenger movement, focus, framing, moisture and vibration may result in video and photo content being a bit different from one passenger to the next. Upon total camera failure, with no usable footage being available from your jump, you’ll be entitled to a full refund of your purchase price.

It might seem easy enough to just strap your own GoPro onto your helmet and take your own pictures, but this is actually highly prohibited in the world of skydiving. In fact, to operate a camera during freefall, an individual must have a specialized certification from the United States Parachute Association and have a minimum of 200 jumps. Action cameras, GoPros and Meta Glasses are not permitted.

Yep! Please eat and drink as you would normally. We have a zero tolerance alcohol and drug policy: absolutely no alcohol and/or drugs in your system 24 hours before making a tandem skydiving jump.

For your safety, you must wait 24 hours to skydive after SCUBA diving – otherwise, you’ll experience rapid decompression sickness in the aircraft.

Like most things in life, nothing is absolutely safe, and jumping out of airplanes fits this category. You can be killed participating in this activity.

Please note, we will not force you to skydive, the decision is yours. We are not able to issue refunds if you decide not to jump. Note, though, that our highly-trained and experienced instructors have seen all flavors of pre-jump jitters and are proficient in coaching folks throughout the entire skydiving process. You’ll be amazed how at ease you feel when you have someone experienced on your side!

Purchases are non-refundable.

Tipping is not expected, but always greatly appreciated. If you feel your instructor has done an especially good job, let them know! All STG tandem instructors are full-time skydiving professionals who work hard to make your first jump amazing.